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Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

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Re: Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

#22

Post by plagiarist »

Hamuko wrote: post #5
TekMol wrote: post #2

I wish it was possible to run a Debian VM on iOS. For laptops, there are many nice options. But for tablets, the latest iPads are currently unmatched at under 600 grams for a 13" tablet. So I would love to use one of those.

UTM? https://getutm.app/

I was very curious but it looks like UTM is unable to JIT properly on newer iOS versions. They might want a desktop Debian with better performance.

Re: Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

#24

Post by trollbridge »

mightysashiman wrote: post #19

Would you mind educating me about use cases for having one or even multiple MacOS VMs on an apple silicon machine please?

Trying to run complex CI/CD for automated build/test toolchains for building iOS apps.

We have a Mac Studio dedicated to that purpose. Periodically something on it stops working (software updates are a common reason). Trying to run CI/CD on a bare metal consumer oriented OS is an exercise in frustration.

It’s also handy to be able to sandbox different environments from each other. Once you have multiple projects that need different versions of Xcode, or even macOS (a good example is wanting to spin things on a beta), you need VMs or multiple machines. (And yes I’m aware of tools like Xcodes, but testing on a beta of macOS requires a reboot and a lengthy install.)

Re: Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

#26

Post by plagiarist »

mightysashiman wrote: post #19

Would you mind educating me about use cases for having one or even multiple MacOS VMs on an apple silicon machine please?

The first thing that comes to my mind is runners for automated workflows that need to happen on MacOS.

Re: Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

#28

Post by plagiarist »

hnlmorg wrote: post #18
ricw wrote: post #7

Is macOS up to scratch to be used as a server these days? Last I checked it would always run into trouble / randomly reboot / become unavailable whenever a new OS update became available. Admittedly this is about 2 years ago. If so, this would be great. Particularly to repurpose older macs.

Personally I wouldn’t recommend macOS as a server OS unless you’re doing something that is specifically macOS dependent (like automated e2e testing of macOS / iOS software). Everything server related that is easy to do on Linux or BSD is at least an order of magnitude more painful on macOS. And like Windows, you cannot run it headless. In fact Windows actually had better support for running headless than macOS despit…

Years ago I had to administer Jenkins on a MacOS build machine. It broke often. I would have to VNC in to accept license agreements and other trivial tasks. I am nowhere near your level but even what little I wanted was an unnecessary PITA to achieve and maintain.

Re: Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

#29

Post by frabonacci »

Khaine wrote: post #8

How does this compare to Lima[1] and Tart[2], which are similar? Also, would it be possible to run BSDs with this? [1] https://lima-vm.io [2] https://tart.run

Yes, lume relies on Apple's Virtualization framework and can run BSD on a Mac with Apple silicon: https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon

I'll definitely document the option in the README, thanks!

On Lima:

- Lima focuses on Linux VMs and doesn't support managing macOS VMs.

- It is more of a container-oriented way of spinning up Linux VMs. We're still debating whether to go in that direction with lume, but the good news is that it would mostly require tweaking the hooks to expose lume’s core to adopt the containerd standard. I’d love to hear your thoughts - would you find it useful to have a Docker-like interface for starting macOS workloads? Similarly to: https://github.com/qemus/qemu-docker

- Still many dependencies on QEMU, which doesn't play well with Apple silicon - while we opted to support only M chips (80-90% of the market cap today) by relying on the latest Apple Virtualization.Framework bits.

On Tart:

- We share some similarities when it comes to tart's command-line interface. We extend it and make it more accessible to different frameworks and languages with our local server option (lume serve). We have also an interface for python today: https://github.com/trycua/pylume

- Going forward, we'd like to focus more on creating tools around developers, creating tools for automation and extending the available images in our ghcr registry. Stay tuned for more updates next week!

- Lastly, lume is licensed under MIT, so you’re free to use it for commercial purposes. Tart, on the other hand, currently uses a Fair Source license.

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